Metacognitive Defibrillator & Nutwerx Squirrelizer; Surrealist Review of the World Nest (v2.3); Unofficial recycler of the disposable society; anti-judeo-christo-islamo-fascist-zombie-brigade resistance cell; Twenty Three Thousand Armed Buddhas; Nanobeachhead of Optimysticism; & future home of the manned mission to dwarf planet Eris. Nothing to see here, people; move along. Do not attempt to adjust your monitor. We control the html; we control the css. Submitted for your perusal. WTFWIT?

23 of these BWRs use a smaller GE Mark I pressure suppression containment conceived as a cost-saving alternative to the larger reinforced concrete containments marketed by competitors.A large inverted light-bulb-shaped steel structure called "the drywell" is constructed of a steel liner and a concrete drywell shield wall enclosing the reactor vessel--this is considered the "primary" containment.. The atmosphere of the drywell is connected through large diameter pipes to a large hollow doughnut-shaped pressure suppression pool called "the torus", or wetwell, which is half-filled with water. In the event of a loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA), steam would be released into the drywell and directed underwater in the torus where it is supposed to condense, thus suppressing a pressure buildup in the containment.The outer concrete building is the "secondary" containment and is smaller and less robust (and thus cheaper to build) than the containment buildings used at most reactors.As early as 1972, Dr. Stephen Hanauer, an Atomic Energy Commission safety official, recommended that the pressure suppression system be discontinued and any further designs not be accepted for construction permits. Hanauer's boss, Joseph Hendrie (later an NRC Commissioner) essentially agreed with Hanauer, but denied the recommendation on the grounds that it could end the nuclear power industry in the U.S....the three original AEC memos, including Hendrie's:November 11, 1971: outlines problems with the design and pressure suppression system containment.September 20, 1972: memo from Steven Hanauer recommends that U.S. stop licensing reactors using pressure suppression systemSeptember 25, 1972: memo from Joseph Hendrie (top safety official at AEC) agrees with recommendation but rejects it saying it "could well mean the end of nuclear power..."In 1976, three General Electric nuclear engineers publicly resigned their prestigious positions citing dangerous shortcomings in the GE design.An NRC analysis of the potential failure of the Mark I under accident conditions concluded in a 1985 report that Mark I failure within the first few hours following core melt would appear rather likely."In 1986, Harold Denton, then the NRC's top safety official, told an industry trade group that the "Mark I containment, especially being smaller with lower design pressure, in spite of the suppression pool, if you look at the WASH 1400 safety study, you'll find something like a 90% probability of that containment failing."

...electricity is merely a fleeting by-product of nuclear power plants. The real legacy -- the lasting product of nuclear power plants -- is nuclear waste, which will be a hazard to future generations who will not get one watt of electricity, but will get this toxic legacy for millions of years.

If they cannot be bothered to find a permanent storage for their waste or even transfer if to dry cask storage now, when they are generating electricity and profits from it every day, what are the chances of that happening in the future when the plant is closed, the people who profited from it long dead or moved away, the area too radioactive to work in? Instead of pushing nukes by subsidizing insurance for tens of billions of dollars, Obama should push them to maximize the dry cask storage as Germany has done.

Kan first visited the Tamura city gymnasium where residents, mainly of Okuma, have been taking shelter. When he was about to leave theevacuation center after spending about 10 minutes there, some evacuees angrily shouted out, "Leaving already?" One evacuee told the prime minister, "You should try living here." "If you're going to visit evacuation centers, you should talk to everyone there," said another.

The only news is that they've set a date. This was formerly "within a month or so". Slowly slowly.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's government on Friday instructed parts of Fukushima Prefecture outside the 20-km no-go zone around the crippled No. 1 nuclear plant to evacuate by the end of May, saying that cumulative radiation levels may pose a health risk to residents.

Susquehanna Spent Fuel Pool Concerns, and How I Ended Up at UCSIn November 1992, Don Prevatte and I submitted a report to the NRC regarding our concerns with spent fuel pools...

Cheating the workers:

Meanwhile, the radiation exposure registration center at the Radiation Effects Association, which keeps track of workers' radiation exposure, says, "If we apply the general rules to those workers who are exposed to radiation of 250 millisieverts, we will have to strip them of chances to work for a considerable number of years. We will treat them completely separately.

A 30-year-old worker with a subcontractor engaged in restoration work at the nuclear power plant said he had been told by an official of a primary contractor that "the radiation you are exposed to this time will not be shown on your radiati...on exposure record book." He said he had also been told: "Even if you are exposed to 250 millisieverts, if you are to work at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, the 250 millisieverts will be exempted."

=Don't worry about it buddy, nobody's counting! You can still work even if you hit the max!

The radiation dose received by one-year-old infants outside of a 30-kilometer radius of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant since Saturday's explosion at the plant may have exceeded 100 millisieverts, a computer simulation conducted by the government showed Wednesday.

Haruki Madarame, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, told reporters, ''The figure represents the level that one-year-old infants would have received and accumulated in their thyroids by midnight Wednesday since the explosion.'' Madarame said the radiation dose accumulated by adults outside the 30-km zone in their thyroids would be lower.